Theme of the Day: One Stands; Everyone Else Sits Normally in a family everyone must do their part. . . pitch in. . . pull their weight. In God’s family, he assigns and accepts the work of one on behalf of all. In God’s house, God’s Son—our brother, Jesus—stands alone on the field of battle […]

Theme of the Day: Glory Is Hidden In Order To Be Revealed Would you look directly at the sun? Only if you wanted to burn your retinas and have permanent blind spots. Would you like to look directly at God? It sounds wonderful in theory. Yet Scripture describes God’s glory as being brighter than the […]

Theme of the Day: Love Your Enemies; Overcome Evil With Good Throughout this season of Epiphany, Jesus has described the governing principles of his kingdom being completely opposite to the governing principles of the world. This week Jesus asks us to befriend our enemies, to love those who hate us, and to repay evil with […]

Theme of the Day: Blessings Are Cursed; Curses Are Blessed “This is good. That is bad.” We often think life is that simple. We believe we can assess a situation accurately determine if it is positive or negative. It’s hubris. As Jesus gathered followers, he taught them that his kingdom runs exactly opposite to the […]

Theme of the Day: The Least Qualified Are The First Sent Imagine you need heart bypass surgery. When meeting with the surgeon, you ask, “How many of these have you done?” He responds, “You get the honor of being my very first patient!” You probably feel more anxious than honored. With important jobs, we understand […]

Theme of the Day: Popularity Is Not Proof Of Success In 2009, Facebook added the “like” button. That same year, Twitter added the “retweet” feature. Interestingly, reported cases of depression began to rise sharply in 2010. It is easy to think that the more people like us, the more successful our lives must be. Likewise, […]

Theme of the Day: Rejection Is Not Proof Of Failure When you are trying to share some important information with someone, but they refuse to listen or perhaps totally reject what you are saying, it feels like you have failed. This is especially true when someone rejects the gospel! We proclaim the good news because […]

Theme of the Day: God Delivers More Than We Ask, Not Less It is easy for us to assume that if God says “no” to a request, we are getting less than we wanted. We need to have an epiphany moment, seeing the reality—that God always wants more for us than we want from him. […]

Theme of the Day: Your Baptism Seals Your Identity “Who is Jesus?” For the longest time, people thought the answer to that question was, “Mary and Joseph’s son” or “a carpenter from Nazareth.” While true enough, those answers do not adequately describe Jesus. But when Jesus was baptized, God the Father spoke, declaring Jesus true […]

Theme of the Day: The Gift of God Is For All People On Christmas Eve the angel told the shepherds, “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10). One wonders if those words struck those Jewish shepherds as odd. For centuries, God had given special attention to […]